Josh could taste the iron tang of blood in his mouth, though the pain had stopped and the stinging of his cheek was nothing in comparison.
Something stopped him from opening his eyes; the faint touch of a familiar timeline. He let his mind drift into the metal of the blade in his neck. The iron was centuries-old, and he felt hundreds of lines weaving out into the past, each one of them connected to a previous victim.
Josh gently probed the other blades. They all had their own tales to tell; so many gruesome, horrible ways to die, and yet one of them was familiar.
‘Wake up, weaver!’ Dalton growled, striking him again.
‘I’m awake!’ snarled Josh.
‘Good, now tell me more about my future.’
So Josh did exactly that. He told him about the Ministry and the bombs, the schism between the factions of the Order, and as he recounted the story, he quietly explored the timelines of the tortured.
Dalton’s face was transfixed by the details of the world he had come to lead. Josh could see a religious zeal in the man’s eyes as he hung off of every word.
‘So, what caused this technological advance?’ Dalton asked when Josh had finished.
‘Something from inside the maelstrom.’
‘A Djinn?’
‘No, more like a man in some kind of weird spacesuit.’
Dalton was deep in thought, processing all the new information. Josh had told him what could be and how to get it; all he needed now was for his ego to kick in.
In the meantime, Josh finally located the timeline that felt so familiar. It was Da Recco’s, the crazy Italian navigator he’d met in Kaffa, 11.347. The Vatican had obviously been using the blades on its heretics long before Torquemada got hold of them.
Josh didn’t waste another second; he found the safest moment and shifted inside it.
85
Da Recco
[Palais des Papes, Avignon. Date:11.364]
Da Recco looked half-dead. His head hung down while the rest of his limp body was bound to the rack. Josh wasn’t feeling that much better himself; the blades were gone, but the memory of the pain was still too real, too vivid.
‘Da Recco?’ Josh whispered.
There was no response.
Josh counted fourteen talons. He pulled them out in sequence, making sure he left the Homunculus in the neck until last.
He knew he wouldn’t have long. Dalton would be hot on his tail as soon as he got a bearing on the timeline Josh had used. It would be a few minutes at most.
‘Joshua?’ Da Recco whispered weakly. ‘Is it you? What are you doing here?’
‘Da Recco, do you think you can walk? We need to leave now!’
The navigator shook his head. ‘Tired. Too tired.’
Josh untied the knots at his feet, and then his wrists, and Da Recco collapsed into his arms.
‘Inquisitors; they never believed me — said I was working with El Diablo.’
He was heavy and smelled really bad. What was left of his clothes were stained and soiled — it took all of his remaining strength for Josh to keep from dropping him.
‘Where are we?’ Josh asked, looking around the dark stone basement.
‘Avignon, Papal Palace — not somewhere I would recommend for its hospitality.’ He held up his hands; the nails were ragged and missing, and two fingers were broken.
‘I need something old,’ said Josh, lowering the navigator into a chair. ‘Preferably man-made.’
‘Well, there are many tools to choose from.’ Da Recco nodded to a wall covered with instruments of torture.
‘I was thinking more like a watch or a compass — something that hasn’t been involved in killing things.’
‘Or a coin?’ said a familiar voice, as a small metal disk bounced across the bloodstained floor.
Josh turned to find the colonel standing in a breach in the middle of a stone wall.
‘How?’
‘No time. Bring your friend. Eckhart and his cronies are less than ninety-seconds away.’
‘I thought the Inquisition might have caught you too,’ Josh said, putting Da Recco into one of the timeship’s bunks. He’d passed out from the pain of being moved.
The colonel was busying himself with an odd-looking first aid kit. The old man mixed a series of exotic looking ingredients together and poured them into a copper syringe.
‘I tried to talk Caitlin’s parents out of their madcap scheme, but they left me to guard the ship.’
He injected Da Recco, watching as the concoction entered his bloodstream and his body relaxed.
‘Milk of the Poppy — never fails.’ The colonel patted Da Recco. ‘But he really needs a healer.’
The colonel took a large bottle of whisky out of one of the steerage compartments and poured them each a large glass. They sat down on either side of the chart table and took a drink.
‘You look like you’ve been through a Russian prison camp.’ He pointed at Josh’s shaved head.
Josh instinctively lifted his hand to his scalp and rubbed it. He hadn’t dared to look in a mirror.
‘Dalton likes his men bald, what can I say?’
‘That boy has been an evil little sadist since birth, and his father was just as bad.’
‘Was?’
The colonel knocked back the rest of his glass. ‘From what I remember he was killed in a hunting accident. Dalton was the only witness.’
‘We need to go back — he’s got Caitlin.’
‘I know,’ the colonel said, pouring another drink.
86
Dalton
Dalton stood in the centre of the Papal torture chamber while the Protectorate carried out a full sweep. He knew it was pointless: Jones was long gone.
He studied the tools of the Inquisition, impressed by the Church’s wide selection of persuasive instruments. The room was a master class in physical interrogation.
One of the officers returned and stood to attention.
‘Nothing to report, sir,’ he reported, his voice altered by the mask.
Dalton waved him away with a casual flick of his hand. He was intrigued by the location, and what might have brought him all the way back here. His gaze fell on the talons that were scattered across the floor. As Dalton gathered each one, he explored their histories, searching for a connection between their latest victim and Jones.
When he found that the prisoner had been an Italian navigator who was no more than a privateer, a mercenary for hire, Dalton felt no closer to an answer. Why the inquisition had decided to interrogate him was a mystery, and he didn’t have time to dig any deeper.
Then he saw the coin.
It was sitting wedged in the clogged cracks of the flagstones, an untarnished golden disc in an otherwise grim setting.
He dug it out with the point of his blade. ‘Captain!’ he barked, reading the inscription. ‘Recall your men.’
Dalton held it up to the light to be sure. The latin around the edge of the coin read:
‘FUTURUM NONDUM SCRIPTUM’
‘The future is not written,’ he translated.
87
Armageddon
Caitlin whiled away the last few hours studying her cell. Every spare inch of stone was covered in the ruminations of the previous occupants. They’d each scratched their own theory of Armageddon into the rough brick: complex temporal coordinates, pictograms of vengeful gods and indecipherable symbols were scrawled across the floor, walls and ceiling.
She touched some of them and felt the insanity ebb through the fine grooves of granite.
‘You all saw it,’ she whispered to herself. ‘In your own way.’
It made her sad to see all of their interpretations, that they had lost their minds trying to calculate the end of times, not knowing that the Eschaton Cascade was being studied by a secret department all along. She wanted to add her own contribution, but had nothing except her fingernails to work with — and she wasn’t crazy enough to sacrifice those yet.
The prison door creaked as it o
pened, inciting howls of contempt from the other inmates — the gaolers had returned.
Caitlin tried to control her breathing, to still the beating of her heart — no matter what happened next she mustn’t show any sign of fear. She knew that her parents had been the only chance of rescue and that if Josh wasn’t cooperating, Dalton would use her to persuade him.
‘Could do with a break about now,’ she muttered to the wall.
Dalton walked casually past the cells, tapping his cane on the bars like a child along school railings. The prisoners shrank away as he approached, hiding in the shadows and muttering curses — they knew better than to provoke him; he needed little excuse to punish them.
He held the coin tightly in his gloved fist, the words of the inscription rolling around in his mind as he tried to decide which of his many questions he should ask Caitlin first.
Dalton was convinced that Jones was the Nemesis, that he knew how to reach Daedalus and the Djinn. He may have escaped, but Dalton still had one important piece of the puzzle — his beloved Caitlin. She would know who was helping him, although it would take a particular kind of persuasion to get her to tell the truth. But he knew her well — he knew her nightmares.
It would begin with something kind. Caitlin hadn’t eaten anything since they’d captured her, so he’d ordered her favourite: freshly baked croissants, blackcurrant jam and tea. He was still a gentleman after all, and no matter what happened after that he would make sure she was well fed. The conversation would begin pleasantly, and if he felt she was withholding he would take a more physical approach. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d felt the sting of his hand.
As they turned the corner they met the guard, a squat little man with a blank expression that matched his intellect.
‘All’s well?’ Dalton asked as the man snapped to attention.
‘Aye, sir.’
It was then Dalton first noticed that the howling had ceased. It was a sound he’d learned to ignore over the last few days, but now, in its absence, there was an eerie silence. He felt the eyes of the inmates on him.
‘What’s wrong with the prisoners?’
‘No idea, sir. Been like that for the last ten minutes, off and on.’
Dalton’s step quickened as he made for Caitlin’s cell.
It was too late.
She was gone.
88
Plan
‘You don’t look so good?’ Caitlin murmured into Josh’s ear as she wrapped her arms around him.
‘Been worse,’ he lied. ‘What did he do to you?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, and sighed. ‘But I think he was planning to.’
‘I’m going to — ‘
‘No, you’re not,’ she interrupted, sniffing back a tear. The relief of seeing him appear through the cell wall had been so great that she couldn’t help but cry — and she hated crying.
‘You two finished saying hello yet?’ her mother’s voice echoed through the speaking tube.
‘Coming,’ Caitlin responded. ‘Thanks for saving them.’
‘Least I could do. Was mostly the colonel’s idea… he seems to think they might be useful.’
She bit his ear.
‘Ow!’
‘So what happens now?’ Josh asked, walking back into the mess.
‘Rufius has some interesting ideas,’ Caitlin’s father replied.
‘Harebrained more like,’ her mother added.
‘No more harebrained than trying to steal an Infinity Engine,’ the colonel retorted.
‘The founder told us to look into Josh’s father,’ said Caitlin.
The colonel stared at the map of the Eschaton Cascade laid out across the table, and scratched his beard.
‘We have two options: go back to the beginning, or try and head off the next event.’ He tapped on the fourth node on the chart.
‘I vote we deal with the Daedalan effect,’ said her father. ‘If we remove the knowledge about the elders and the maelstrom we reduce the likelihood of a division and the insurgency.’
Josh shook his head. ‘I’ve seen a reality where they knew nothing about Daedalus but they still believed in the prophecy — they called it the Paradox.’
‘Which is how we remember it too,’ Caitlin’s mother agreed.
‘In that one, someone had screwed around with technology and nearly destroyed the planet.’
‘Because someone intervened from the future,’ Caitlin said, tapping on the seventh symbol.
Josh nodded. ‘Someone’s using the maelstrom to move about through time. You called them “Sappers” once,’ he said, turning to the colonel.
‘Time miners,’ the old man agreed. ‘Never actually caught one in the act, mind you. Just a theory.’
‘I’ve seen one,’ said Josh. ‘Just before you closed the breach at Gisors. He had some kind of space suit.’
‘Was it mirrored? With this symbol on it?’ Caitlin drew a logo of two F’s back-to-back.
Josh shook his head. ‘Didn’t get that close.’
She bit her lip. ‘Something was organising the monads when I was in the maelstrom. It seemed to be controlling them.’
‘We’ve seen it too,’ admitted her mother. ‘We assumed they were Augurs.’
‘I don’t think they’re anything to do with the Order,’ declared the colonel, shaking his head. ‘I think the founder was right, that it’s something to do with you Joshua — we need to go back and find out who this mysterious father of yours was.’
89
2000
[Cambridge, UK. Date: 12.000]
The university grounds were shrouded in darkness. The night sky was clear, and the music from the ball drifted over the lawns and into the bushes where Caitlin and Josh were hiding.
Josh had only ever seen a couple of photos of his mother when she was younger — before he was born. They were faded old polaroids: one of her with a group of her friends, all dressed in party clothes in some kind of club, and the other standing on a boat on the Thames in the middle of winter.
It was weird to think that at this point in time she was only two years older than him.
The colonel appeared from behind a stand of trees using the light from his tachyon as a torch. He took out his almanac and flipped through a few pages, as if reacquainting himself with an old friend.
‘Still feels peculiar being back in the linear.’
‘Nowhere near as weird as being in there,’ Caitlin muttered, looking back to the aperture that was flickering in the wall of the porter’s lodge. Her mother and father were waving from the other side of the shimmering portal as it slowly shrank to nothing.
‘I’m still not quite sure why they insisted we dress up,’ Josh said, pulling at his starched shirt collar for a little more breathing space. He felt like an overdressed waiter in the evening suit they’d made him wear.
‘I think they’re making up for all the times they didn’t get to,’ Caitlin replied. She looked stunning, wearing a long ball-gown of midnight blue that accentuated all her curves. Her mother had woven silver threads into her hair, which glinted in the moonlight. Josh wondered if this was what it was like to go to a prom, like one of those kids that actually graduated.
‘Must be weird having them back.’
She put her arm through his. ‘Not as weird as witnessing your own conception.’
‘Trying not to think about that.’
‘Where are we?’ Josh squinted at the turreted towers of the university.
‘Girton College, Cambridge, 12.000. Your mother’s in her second year of a history degree,’ recited the colonel without looking up from the pages of his book.
‘You never told me she went to Cambridge!’ Caitlin sounded impressed.
‘I didn’t know. She never talked about it.’
Josh thought back to all the arguments they’d had about him finishing his education. His mother had been so keen to get him into university — the life that she’d given up — but he was adamant that he didn’t want to
go.
He knew that she’d left because of him, that she’d given up everything to care for her baby. A combination of dyslexia and ADHD had made it impossible for Josh to get the grades he needed and gradually they’d come to an unspoken understanding that he was never going to make it in academia — what he hadn’t realised was how brilliant she must have been.
‘This is one of the best colleges in the country. The professors are among the elite, and four of them are in the Order,’ the colonel said smugly, tucking his almanac inside his tuxedo. He looked like something from a seventies lounge band — maroon velvet with black collars and a ruffled shirt. ‘Now, who would care for a drink?’
It was a beautiful summer’s evening. The darkening sky was slowly matching the colour of Caitlin’s dress, and the gardens around the college were full of sweetly scented roses. It was like a country house from one of his mum’s period dramas.
Josh was pleasantly surprised to find the ball was actually more like a rave than something from ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. A long white marquee had been pitched on the college lawns; the roof was an ever-changing light show of lasers and disco ball rainbows pulsing to a nineties club classic. They navigated their way around numerous couples in ball gowns and tuxedos in various states of undress, while others wandered drunkenly off into the grounds.
‘There’s something odd about this,’ commented the colonel, who was staring intently into a lensing sphere. ‘You two mingle and see if you can locate her. I need to check on something.’
He marched off into the dark, holding the lens ahead of him like a crazy, myopic wizard, but no one paid him any attention.
They reached the marquee as the Prodigy’s Firestarter kicked off. Josh and Caitlin looked into a seething mass of bodies jumping around in time to the beat. It was impossible to make anyone out in the strobing light — especially a woman who he had only seen in a faded photo.
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 64
